


The right and the best refuge

by BloodyIria



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Doctor Strange (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 04:08:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14560533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodyIria/pseuds/BloodyIria
Summary: Strange can’t really explain why he has just teleported himself in Tony Stark’s living room.Probably, he needs to face the rationality of a mind akin to his own – but the Sorcerer must admit that bleeding on Stark’s rug is not exactly what he would define an act of politeness, and doing so after he battled a devil in a little girl’s head is even worse.





	The right and the best refuge

**The right and the best refuge**

 

Strange can’t really explain why he has just teleported himself in Tony Stark’s living room.  
Probably, he needs to face the rationality of a mind akin to his own – but the Sorcerer must admit that bleeding on Stark’s rug is not exactly what he would define an act of politeness, and doing so after he battled a _devil_ in a little girl’s head is even _worse_.  
_Breathe.  
__Control.  
_ All of his organs are at their right place. He has already checked his vitals, and despite being on the verge of collapsing, they are not _that bad_ – he lost count of the blood droplets left on Tony’s belongings, carmine mirrors and remains of a battle that is still sucking his energy out.  
_It hurts like hell.  
_ One of the reasons that leads Strange not to go back to the Sanctum, is to avoid Wong’s fury. Stephen hasn’t mastered the exorcism’s spells needed yet – _“Please, save my daughter!”_ –, but either way, how could he have refused to help?  
_It’s my duty.  
__Such monstrosities should not be allowed on this plane of existence.  
_ Moreover, Tony Stark’s _Bakthiari Bibibaf_ , with its knots barehanded braided, is for sure the most rational and the safest place on Earth, if you want to avoid other magic and near fatal encounters .  
Magic can’t arrive there – and at the same time Stephen is unable to fool himself: magic is everywhere, even in the blood of the fingers that created that very rug.  
“Strange..?”  
_Stark_.  
He sounds so distant, although Stephen knows the other is there, behind his back, trying to pick him up. Tony's hands are on his body, touching him as they are looking for a physical wound in order to stop the bleeding.  
“ _Doctor_.”  
Stephen can’t help, but to specify it, and he almost chokes. There is a gurgling in his throat, a clot of blood is in his mouth and it spills out on his chin.  
_He is still fighting.  
_ It is the first time that he receives a demon in his body: _it is breaking his soul, devouring him from the inside_.  
He could have been more prepared.  
_– Please, save my daughter! –  
_ And then it would have been too late.  
“Yeah, sure. You should have teleported in a hospital for that, _Glinda_.”  
Stark's comment arrives way too slowly to his ears and Stephen smiles bitterly, but not because the hospital option is totally useless in his condition: he remembers that _Wicked_ is scheduled in Broadway that week. Well, he should ask Tony to keep him company.  
_Assuming he can take his body back, of course.  
_ “Just... give me a minute, okay?”  
Tony is holding him tightly. Stephen senses the other man’s arm around his waist and his body heat warming his cold limbs, as Stark is supporting him against the risk to fall on the rug again – it seems that Tony does really like that _thing_ , and Stephen mentally noted he should buy the man another one to apologize.  
Stark smells like coffee – like coffee, sweat, bergamot and like something has just burnt his skin. Strange is almost sure he has interrupted one of his all-nighters working in the lab.  
In fact, Stephen visited the other in several occasions.  
After Thanos, more often than not, he got rid of the parasites that still try to attack Tony's brain.  
It is a necessity, and the former surgeon sometimes feels a blatant sense of guilt thinking about the decision taken with the Time Stone and about its (apparently irreversible) consequences – especially on Peter, Peter so dear and so close to Tony’s _heart_.  
While opening his third eye, too often Stephen noticed those voracious inter-dimensional bacteria feast with Stark’s soul – the Doctor bet that even now, if he had the strength, he would glimpse the larva of a psychic-leech on the other’s nape.  
However, Stephen is now far too weak; and Tony’s voice is just a muffled and distant sound, lost in the roaring of his blood in the ears.

When he opens his eyes, Strange knows that he is now in his own psyche.  
It is a place he looked after for so long.  
All his atrocious deaths against Dormammu are archived in a remote spot and all the limitless futures after Thanos are forcefully put in a metaphorical drawer.  
Fear, despair, agony, torment and misery ( _unmentionable, dreary and monstrous Misery_ ) are hidden: Stephen dissected them, learnt them in every nuance and shadow and they are still unbearable.  
_For each spell there is a price to pay, a gash to conceal and sleepless nights spent almost dying.  
_ “Doctor! You arrived, finally.”  
Strange turns around, following the sound of that voice: it’s impersonal, without any particular accent or any emotion. It’s a timbre he would easily forget and for which he would be unable to imagine a face.  
And yet, that creature has indeed a face and, at a first glance, Stephen would say it was an elderly man... but it has not a single wrinkle.  
His jowls are sunken, but it does not seem like it suffered from starvation; there are black circle under his eyes, but the light in its gaze suggests that it gets plenty of sleep every night.  
“To my deepest dismay, I must say that I have not much time left: your spells are sending me back to Hell.”  
Stephen puts his defenses up, but the creature keeps on staring at him, wearing a white suit, the bare feet buried in the dark and wet soil of a grove.  
_How did they arrived there..?  
_ “For this meeting, I dared to give a new shape to your psyche. I shall be brief, I promise... I just want to show you something magnificent.”  
Slowly, Stephen lowers his hands – _they shiver, hurting him. It’s a suffering he can't be freed of_ – and decides to follow _his_ demon.  
The Sorcerer walks alongside the elder, until, without knowing how and when, the creature changes itself into a monstrous and beastly black dog, eyes as red as fire.  
They have walked for hours under a crimson sun wrapped in an ultramarine sky. The soil is now akin to ash and there is the smell of burning skin in the air – _and the fragrances of coffee and bergamot_.  
Perfectly lined up dark trees are along their path. They appear to be skeletal and twisted towards the sky in a begging motion.  
It is at that very moment that Strange catches a vision out of the corner of his eyes: men tied to the black wood, left to rot upside down.  
_The Hanged Man.  
_ Some of them are screaming, others are throwing up – bile and blood –, many of them are dead.  
“Please, do not mind them. They are paying for their crimes and soon they will feel better.”  
The dog’s jaws do not move, they stay still as the sound of its roaring voice arrives to Stephen's ears, who stays impassive to the scenario – he saw so much worse, he lost himself in the blood of countless lives and he learnt how to tolerate the horror.  
“There is no need to worry. I do not care about such illusions, nor you can deceive me.” Strange says with his deadpan face, following the beast towards a lone tree at the end of the grove.  
“But I do not intend to lie, dear Doctor. Thanks to your splendid work, I have no strength left on this metaphysical plane.” From its tone of voice, Stephen can sense the dog is smiling. It doesn’t bare its fangs, only its eyes express a furious joy. “Before I disappear, my only wish is to boast of possessing this soul .”  
_Tony_.  
Tony who seems to be frozen in time: he does not scream nor he prays, but his soul, or whatever else of him is trapped here, is alive.  
_Hanged, but not upside down._  
_The reverse side of a common circumstance.  
_ _Maybe Stephen should start learning something about tarots.  
_ “Sacrifice, bargaining, acceptance and then growth... a little push towards a new life.”  
The monstrosity talks again, and Stephen tries to listen to it carefully, as his body starts burning again from the inside.  
_It’s consuming him, breaking him_. The pain tears his chest, leaving him breathless. He is now struggling for each gasp of air, while losing connection with that subconscious reality.  
Strange falls, overpowered, and the dog is now over him, devilish paws on his shoulders, pushing him down in the grey ashes of the soil.  
“And here is the trick: this hope is opposed by regrets, worries, traumas and by a dissembled life made of sentimental losses.”  
Stephen is choking. The beast’s weight prevents him from breathing and its claws dig into his skin.  
He sees the dog feeding on his body, and for an instant the creature’s face turns into the elder's one again.  
_Its breath stinks like rotten meat.  
__Lips almost pressed against his.  
_ Stephen feels the other’s touch on his mouth, venomous blood on the tip of his tongue.  
_But the beast is weak, it is fading away.  
_ “Doctor, you should pay more attention to the souls growing in your garden. When they get lost, they come here, and I discipline them _again_.” His whisper is weaker than a breath, but Stephen hears it as it is shouted with insane and wild rage, a delirious roar.  
Then, as the Sorcerer looks at him out of breath, the devil slightly tilts its head to the right: a grotesque smile spreads on his purple lips that, in the end, putrefies along with its already dead body.  
_That abomination was in the head of a little girl._  
If he had to, he would have used that spell for a million more times.

Strange wakes up to the smell of coffee.  
Along with it, there is a more intense perfume that wraps him in a warm embrace that tastes like bergamot.  
It doesn’t take him long to realize that Stark undressed him and put him to bed.  
_Damn it, the couch would have been enough to end that story.  
_ There are no wounds on his skin. The blood he lost the night before only depended on the metaphysical fight he had with the demon.  
He sits, hands folded under his chin, as Tony’s image in that garden of souls flashed behind his eyelids.  
“ _Morgana_! You are awake! I was starting to worry that maybe you’d needed a love’s first kiss. But... wrong tale and roles, right?”  
Tony is on the bedroom’s threshold, two cups of coffee in his hand and the Arc reactor glittering through his Led Zeppelin’s t-shirt.  
“About that, Stark..."”  
Stephen looks at the other man deadly serious, and Tony does the same, raising an eyebrow, ready to receive whatever catastrophic news Strange has.  
“... I think that _Galadriel_ sounds like a better fit.”  
The Doctor enjoys the other’s reaction: Tony almost chokes on his coffee, before giving in a half laugh, a half cough.  
“Fine. I’ll award you with _one_ inspiration point, _Sorcerer_.” Tony says, his voice hoarse from the near death experience.  
Stephen does not answer, and he reaches out to take the cup Stark prepared for him.  
It’s black and smooth. The words “ _Doc Ass_ ” are printed in white arial bold characters and Strange sneers, sipping the hot drink – while taking the cup, his hurt fingers brushed against Tony's, incredibly warm in his cold and trembling touch.  
“So, _Doctor_. What brought you on my rug?”  
Legit question, and Strange hasn’t thought of an answer yet.  
They look at each other, and Stark sits on the edge of the bed. There are purple shadows under his eyes, Stephen also notices that Stark has few more wrinkles compared to the last time he saw him.  
It’s hard to explain, but Tony was his first thought, when Stephen understood that he needed not a safe a place, but one where mistakes and risks would not have been condemned – _a solid shelter, without magic portals or a basement occupied by his personal Boogyman_.  
_Misery. Atrocious Misery, hungry and cruel Misery.  
_ “I had nowhere else to go.” He finally says, after another sip of the coffee.  
It’s bitter, intense. It feels tangy on his tongue, that is slowly losing the capability to enjoy the common human flavors – luckily, tea and coffee are still an exception.  
“You mean, you hadn’t a better place to go.”  
Tony's words are filled up with sarcasm, but it is clear that there is pain behind that wry smile – _bitterness towards his precarious relationships, torn to shreds at his feet.  
__The Hanged Man.  
_ “I'm afraid that this is, indeed, the right and the best refuge.”  
Stark’s astonishment is genuine, but Stephen does not take back his words: he does believe in them.  
The former surgeon understands that the inclination to get lost in the fire of their own fears is the feature that binds them together.  
Tony tends to lock himself in a barrier of passive-aggressive poison, that often leads him to the bottom of a bottle.  
Stephen, on the other hand, tries to find control over his emotions. He absorbs each wound and tries to rationalize the pain, losing the connections with his body.  
_They are next to each other's heart.  
_ Strange could try and reach out for Tony's hand, and then he would meet the sorrow that both of them share.  
Broken in their own little ways, the fragments in which they are shattered perfectly match; and so they are able to recognize the dreadful fall into the darkness in their eyes.  
_But in these days they are trying to climb up again towards the light.  
_ After a long moment of silence, Stark smiles.  
“I don’t think I’ll ever understand your battles, _Doc_ , but whenever you need help, well... please, come back to bleed in my living room again.” He says ironically, looking right in Stephen’s eyes – sky blue eyes so deep they are almost hypnotizing.  
The Sorcerer smiles back.  
He decides that he can take a little hazard, because by playing with their analogies, he can now say that it feels like he has known Stark for so long.  
Strange puts down _his_ cup (it looks like it was made just for him, and he likes it) and he moves closer to Tony.  
Their breaths are slow and controlled, and Stephen seems to savor Tony's perfume on his tongue.  
“I take that as an invitation to come and say hi more often.”  
Stark does not move. He maintains eye contact and his stare is deep and analytical, as he is evaluating not only what to say, but even the various outcomes to each answers considered.  
But it end, it seems like Tony decides to offer his heart to Stephen – and no, it is not the Arc reactor that still shines between their chests.  
“That would be great. Will you do it for real?”  
Strange feels the other’s lips articulate those words on his mouth, Tony’s breath on his skin, and with a smile he tastes the intimacy of that instant.  
_It’s a good start.  
_ Tied up to those dying branches and trapped in a cage of regrets, Stark has waited for far too long. Now it is the time to unleash those bloodstained ropes, even if the Doctor is aware that Tony needs his time – _to heal, to learn how to trust someone again._  
And yet, Stephen agrees, whispering only the first "yes" of many endless others breathed between Tony’s lips.

  
***End**

**Note**

 I sold my soul to IronStrange. 

(And to think that everything started because of Sherlock _and_ Sherlock jokes!)

I hope you enjoyed this! I'm not a native English speaker, so please, if you find any mistakes, let me know and DM me on my tumblr or on my twitter! They are open! =D 

http://bloodyiria.tumblr.com/  
  
https://twitter.com/InsaneIria


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